Lashana Lynch (‘Bob Marley: One Love’): The reggae legend ‘wanted people to feel like they had their own radical spirit’
While in discussion to play Rita Marley in “Bob Marley: One Love,” actress Lashana Lynch “met up with [director] Reinaldo Green just to discuss, selfishly, my thoughts on being a Jamaican woman” and, “artist-to artist,” she wanted to “express the importance of the authenticity that will eventually be portrayed in this movie, which a lot of it boils down to accent. I wanted to know that I was auditioning for a project that would protect the accents, protect patois, and really represent Jamaica in the way that I know it deserves.” Watch our complete video interview with Lynch above.
The film follows reggae legend Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) from the 1970s to the end of his life in 1981. Rita was Bob Marley’s wife, a musician in her own right, and one of the producers of this film, along with their children Ziggy Marley and Cedella Marley. “I was determined to meet her, to spend time with her,” Lynch says. “I flew to her home on two occasions to spend the afternoon and evening with her, just to capture her essence and to just feel her out as a human being.”
It wasn’t Rita’s artistry that interested the actress the most: “I really wanted to see what kind of human being she was, what kind of mother she was, how much she loved Bob and where that came from and how it sits in her, and just give her a chance to say any and everything that comes to mind to this weird person coming in your house telling you that she’s gonna play you.”
As for the music, “There is a vibration which can’t be skated over in terms of reggae in general, but Bob’s music in particular.” Even his most political, religious songs “also have a peaceful undertone.” They “make the listener come to a point where they feel like they need to either do something and act, or they need to sit back and reflect on their own morals … I think he wanted people to feel like they had their own radical spirit within themselves that could do something.”
Despite Bob and Rita Marley’s stature in musical and cultural history, though, “there is a really complicated human within these people … It is important that we remember to humanize figures like him.” His public persona “helped shape the landscape of how we view celebrity today,” but “choices and lifestyle, they just don’t come from anywhere. They are real experiences, sometimes dark experiences, that make people speak up.” And he made listeners remember “that change happens from within first before going out into the world and making a bigger change.”